From the time we are in grade school and then go onto high school, we all learn that sports is big business.

You’re either one of the ‘cool’ kids that belong to a clique for sports, and if you’re not a male and part of the teams, you’re a cheerleader, which by the way is the most dangerous of sports for injuries.

Jocks get special privileges when it comes to bad grades or skipping classes because face it, sports equals money.

If an athlete is lucky enough to be noticed, and they can be a failing student, but win scholarships to college to play ball.

Right now, there are former coaches, such as Mike Ditka, that speak before Congress and tell how the NFL does not take care when it comes to health care for former players of the game when it comes to head injuries and the increase of Alzheimer’s.

That is shameful for one of the richest groups of businessmen, and all white multi-billionaire owners, in that they do not provide for their warriors.

But another thing that Americans and that means you and me, is that when multi-billionaire owners demand that we the taxpayers pay to build stadiums for their million dollar players to play a game, and it’s not only football.

This is where eminent domain comes in, whereby Americans own their homes and property, but somehow a sports team can come in, and take homes, buying them out for less than they are worth, to build stadiums and parking lots.

We’ve all heard and read the stories when this happens.
Oh, they promise that their grand stadiums will repay tax dollars ten-fold.

When the Super Bowl comes to a locale, do the taxpayers reap any benefits?

I am a retired aerospace engineer, happily married for over twenty-four years. My hobbies include blogging on PPOV, reading mystery/romance novels, playing guitar, learning the piano and writing. My husband and I love to travel in our camper/trailer, and have visited 45 states, besides having lived in France for 2 years and seeing most of Europe.
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life? Well, that's true of every day but one - the day you die." American Beauty
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." Mark Twain
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar." Mark Twain

Thanks for the link, Nellie. I find this new development quite hilarious — since expanding MediCare seems a lot more “progressive” than the watered down public option they’ve been talking about lately. Is it just a terminology issue?

Yesterday, people were saying there might be a bill ready by today. Don’t know where that stands now.

I’m very familiar with the Brian DeMarco story in particular because he played for Jax when I had season tickets and followed what happened to him after he left the NFL. He is certainly a poster child form the uncaring nature of the league and NFLPA. Meanwhile he can barely walk and his family had to live in a storage container for a while. It’s beyond a travesty.

Not for nothing, why the heck are citizens paying for stadiums to be built for these teams, I could never figure that one out.

Tax revenue? Which the city would not likely seen for at least 3-5yrs sometimes longer, because the hosting city usually along with the stadium, gives the owners tax breaks as an additional incentive to move there.

Really, how exactly does this benefit us, who really makes out here, the citizens or the team owners?

Hey e’cat, they’re not that much fun to go to. You can’t see anything, it’s like watching ants running around a big field, and it’s usually freezing cold.

I always get to sit next to the guy that is over weight, half naked and has his body painted with the team colors that screaming in your ear, sloshing beer on you…no lie, happened to me twice. Refuse to ever go to one again.

I’m just as home at an art museum, ballet, sports game, or rock concert. I’m weird like that.

Obnoxious fans do suck, as do bad seats. I feel in a really weird place on this. I was one of those creative types whom eschewed sports altogether (the whole explicit conformity thing never bode well with me). One guy I worked with right after high school said, oh wait until you’re older. I said, “yeah right”.

Now, I don’t live for any team, if I miss a game I miss it -- in fact I rarely sit down and watch one unless there’s nothing else on. Can’t sit through baseball at all (it’s like water torture to me), will only watch “my teams” if it’s basketball (or to watch Kobe and the Lakers lose), don’t much care for NFL, except the Superbowl or if one of my teams is doing well, and going to the local university games (there’s not a whole lot to do in downtown Tucson). Quite frankly I know too many people that still can’t stand football, and I feel torn, because before bonding with my dad and learning more about it, I felt the same way. So to women, the thing about sports with guys is twofold. One, it’s father-son bonding, and on another, like when I visited a sort of brother-in-law, part of whose family (not him though) was totally for McCain and Palin, we got off to a really rocky start -- at which someone changed the subject to sports -- smoothed everything out. Now, I totally got lost, ’cause I don’t really keep up on all the ins and outs and new players and such, but it proved to me once and for all that sports serves a real social purpose for male dynamics (it also has ugly sectarian qualities, too, of course).

Needless to say our type of sports interest is indeed very cynical, and nowhere can criticism of jocks and special treatment be more pronounced than from us (and several sports columnists). And on jocks? Part of the reason I’ve learned to love football is to watch jocks getting battered on the field! I’ve an evil schadenfreude streak in me that dates back to when the HS Football team wanted to kick my ass for being “queer” — there again though, it was my best friend and a few others who were on the team that helped defend me.

On paying taxes for stadiums, I dunno. I get it, but I’m of another mind, clouded still by my anger over the Seattle Sonics being no more… what can I say, it’s a nostalgic guy thing and a display of regional pride -- however silly that might sound. Needless to say though, they should come up with their own money. Don’t tell me with all the corporate sponsorship and tacky stadium names you can’t do it. I know purists will have a hissy fit, but do what team jerseys in European club soccer do.

And with stadiums, Quest Field and the old Kingdome were in a industrial port part on the way to Boeing, so it’s not like they were taking away people’s homes (I dunno, maybe the original did, too long ago for me to know -- I know the University of Phoenix one is in a residential/farm area though). The businesses that spring up around a stadium sort of speak for themselves, to me. Alice Cooper’s restaurant, similarly, is right behind US Airways Center -- and quite frankly, there is NOTHING else in downtown PHX than around the stadiums.

In the end, be thankful for sports though. The delinquent players get away with a lot, but the majority are off the streets and being kept busy. That’s how I look at it -- it’s a diversion program of sorts, albeit with ridiculously inflated salaries which can cause “mo’ problems”.

j’avaz, how about we come up with a nice huge tax on billionaire white sports team owners to pay for health care!? (Well, we may have to throw in Wall Street execs, insurance company CEOs and all lobbyists, too.) Problem solved? ;o)

A friend of mine in Arizona is living off social security. So are most of his neighbors. They cannot afford season tickets or even single tickets to the local stadium any longer.

So, what do they do? Pool their resources and watch a broadcast on TV. My point is this: At some point, you will be left wondering who is actually watching the game? At some point, every single seat may be filled with a camera and that camera may be leased by one or more people. People are there…but not there.

Health care is a lot like that. We no longer take part in the spectator sports with the unwashed masses. We are surgically separated via the internet, TV, email, etc. I think if we ACTUALLY still went to sporting events and took part in the Colosseum, we would feel more human and more in touch with the problems everyone are facing.

Yup, you’re right, and they should allow community ownership.
Technically, not a charter team, though, but that’s splitting hairs. The Packers are the third-oldest franchise in the league. They joined the NFL in 1920, the year after it was formed. The only two charter teams are the Chicago Bears, who started out as the “Decatur Staleys,” and, ironically, since is what the article is about, the Arizona Cardinals.

Why am I paying for the new stadium n AZ with it’s dome and portable grass field? I have no way to get there, pay for parking let alone for a ticket to a game!
(KO just called SP, “Sister Sarah.” LOL)
Quiz me this? have you or do you know of some one that dresses up/ paints their body to go to a football game?

We pay taxes right now for medicare/medicare why do we need a middle man to pay,or not, the bills and make a large profit. What the hell is so wrong with single payer-Medicare for all. I would have been happy to pay a bit more if everyone was covered!
Tucson is paying for an EMPTY stadium right now!